AIR 81-82

AN: Sorry this took so long. I wrote a major plot hole and had to rewrite some stuff. Chapter 83 is about 50% done and should be out by Tuesday.

Chapter 81

I stood out in the middle of the desert completely alone. 

The air was dry and the sky was cloudy. The rain drizzled, most of it evaporating before it could hit the ground, some of it evaporating after. Most of the water would be blown out of the Desert Strip and into the surrounding land, making the area at the edge of the desert into floodlands. 

The desert was too long and strange to have been made naturally. And it would have faded immediately without something keeping it dry, but it persisted. 

It was a scar in the most literal sense. 

Daos and laws were very different but very similar things. Laws were truths of the world and daos were truths of the heart. But sometimes, if the heart was strong enough, it could make the world recognize its truths. 

That was what had happened here. Someone’s being, someone’s truth had scarred the very land beneath me. 

The region of the Five Sects was very clearly an old battlefield. The bat beneath the earth, the dead old man, and the poisons of the snake were signs of that. The Hidden Viper had established their sect after studying the poison left behind by the snake and Hollow Echo had inherited the blood of the demonic bate. The descendants of the warriors who fought the demons had established their own sects, the Bloody Fist, the Raging River, and the Blossoming Sword. 

But even before that, there was an older battle still. 

The desert beneath me was the only denotation of its existence, and even the desert had forgotten his qi, only dao remained. 

On each grain of desert sand was a refusal of water, a denial of moisture. 

It was more than dry, more than empty, it was a thirsty, almost starving thing. 

It was the Dao of Desire. 

These types of daos generally powered people, giving them the strength to gain what they desired, but this was different. 

This was a desire for everything. The technique would probably involve the user getting hit by the attacks and absorbing them. Eating them?

The long body of the desert strip had been a snake at some point. But after the attack, the dao had eaten them so thoroughly that there was less than nothing left. 

A desire for something. 

I had purposely not touched the land when I first got here. It seemed unfair for me to uproot the history of the place and rob whatever lucky bastard stumbled upon here to gain his reward. 

Here was a legacy, a gift waiting for someone to claim it. 

But that seemed less and less likely as the days went on. 

I dove. 

The sand moved around me like air as I went deeper and deeper into the earth. A hundred miles, two hundred miles. 

For a planet as big as Ah Marin, this was barely a scratch on the crust. 

Three hundred miles. The ground was no longer sand, it was hard compact earth and metals. 

Five hundred miles. 

Now it was a cavern, one as wide as the Desert Strip itself. The pitch black consumed even the thought of light down here, or really the thought of anything. 

I made light, a small flame and instantly, it vanished. 

It didn’t burn out or die. It was a simple fire, a ball of fire qi lit to burn, but the light hadn’t even touched the ground. It was eaten, and absorbed. 

Down below, the body of an immortal layed undone. 

It was there, and at the same time, it was not there. 

This was a case where the dao outlived the man.

A hollow thing of desire burned in the place of the corpse. It-- he was still alive, technically. 

But death would be better than whatever this was, and I couldn’t leave him like this. I had ignored it for centuries but now…It was like an itch, a need to correct things. 

It was amoral of me, but I had never really cared about human life. I wasn’t evil. I hated evil, but I wasn’t good either. 

I was neutral. I did what I could when I could, but mostly I kept to myself. Caring about a person was hard enough, but caring about whole groups of people, or strangers was new to me. 

At some point, when you knew more dead names than living ones when humans kept dropping like mayflies at every blink. When eons passed like moments and millennia ticked away every second, it became hard to care about lives. 

I’d seen death. I’d seen universes rot. I’d seen civilization wiped out and trillions slaughtered.

And even after Dane’s ego had died, those memories hadn’t. 

It made me numb. Apathetic. 

Whatever bit of Bill was left struggled against that, but what was one lifetime’s worth of passion against a near eternity of apathy?

I still cared for people, for Nai, for the maidens, even for Chin and the village. But that was a recent change and even that had been a struggle. 

Until now, that was.

I walked towards the incorrect thing. 

Ah-Min Tah had failed to break through to the immortal realm. His dao had been too weak. 

Here was the opposite. 

He was alive, his soul was alive at least but he was no longer a person. Everything about him, everything to his very core was consumed.

He had hungered, he had desired and starved so much that he had consumed his very being. 

It was like a black hole condensing all matter into one singular mass. 

I could see the fight even now. Time wasn’t capable of hiding it from me. 

The man had struck with all he had, an attack filled with the aspect of desire and consumption. An attack so eager to eat that it had eaten the swordsman itself. 

It was absolute.

He must have been grievously wounded to have resorted to this. To give his very being over to just one aspect, to devour himself and the attacker whole, he must have known this was how it would have turned out. 

He must have been protecting something- no someone. 

I could see his face, not as it is but as it was. I could see his smile, his desire to live and to experience all that was. 

He had the desired experience. He had desired love and joy and pain and hatred, all things he could feel, he wanted. His dao had not been born from endless gluttony but rather willful life, and in the midst of battle, all of that had changed. 

He became this thing, this empty eating thing in order to protect someone. He let one aspect of his dao eat him whole, and now there was nothing left. 

I walked over to the living corpse and touched it. 

It clawed at me with hunger and vigor. I looked at the man’s soul, the book that recorded his very being and there was only one word. 

Devour. 

Even if I were to break it, there would be nothing left. All it was, all it is, was hunger. 

I reached down and slowly pressed my presence into it. And bit by bit, piece by piece, the former person broke. 

I was expecting something. A sense of revulsion or refusal. I was expecting my dao to rise up and prevent me from killing it.

But that didn’t happen, instead, the man’s soul shattered, his corpse crumbled and his endless desire was no more. 

When I went back up and beyond the surface, the rain fell into the sand and traveled deep below the earth. 

Why?

That was the question the array posed to me as soon as I came up.

“Because,” I replied. “He wasn’t at peace.”

It was not suffering. It was not in need and it was harmless. 

I took a moment to think. To the array, what I did wasn’t logical. I had killed something, someone who seemed to exist in a neutral form. My actions in its eyes were strange, maybe even wrong. 

How do you know it wasn’t at peace?

“It had no mind, no soul. It was more of a thing than a person,” I explained. “And even then, how could a constant state of hunger be peaceful.”

Does desire counter peace?

“No. But insatiable desire does. It was broken. He was broken.”

How do you know?

That was a good question. How do I explain the fundamental wrong that person had suffered? How do I explain that to a being of only logic and conditions? 

“It was like you, I suppose. All it could do was want and not have.”

Chapter 82

The array wandered. That's what it did most of the time, wander. 

It searched for peace, trying to understand it, to define it. 

A list of conditions was all it had for now. A long list of rules with various exceptions and ideas, to the array, that was what peace was, or what peace could be. 

The monkey wasn’t making things any easier. 

Wukong trailed behind him, hidden from everyone except for the array. 

“How goes the search?” The God-Imperium asked.

The array didn’t reply. Why should it? The monkey king wasn’t searching for an answer after all. He knew how the search went. 

Wukong smiled. 

“Come now, you should talk to me you know.”

The array ignored him. The God-Imperium was able to see through him like paper, talking to him was about as meaningful as a stone talking to a man. What could a rock possibly think that a human couldn’t comprehend? 

And so the array wandered and the old monkey king floated by him, watching. 

Yes, the monkey king was watching him. 

When the array had asked him why, the monkey king had just shrugged. 

“You’re a new thing,” Wukong had said, and then he just kept watching like a child following an ant with wide eyes. 

The man didn’t give it advice or wisdom, he just watched. Occasionally he would be bothersome, poking him or something or other. If it were mortal, it would have thought less of the God-Imperium. 

It would have thought the God-Imperium stupid or dull. Why would something of its power focus on it?

But it wasn’t a mortal, and more so, it wasn’t stupid. The being following him wasn’t the whole of Wukong, only a piece of him. He was here and elsewhere all at once. And what was a God-Imperium to do if not lazy about?

They were all-powerful, beyond reproach and pain by anything not within their own rank. And this God-Imperium was equal to or above all of his peers. The great Sun Wukong, the god of cultivation, and the Sage Who Split the Heavens. 

This mischievous monkey had all of eternity to bother the array. He had all of eternity to bother anyone it wanted. 

So the array ignored him and wandered. It looked to the beasts and it looked to the mortals and it looked to the cultivators and all the life it could reach. 

It looked for peace. 

It looked for understanding. 

It looked for meaning. 

It found none. 

“You know I could have fixed you? Back before you were made I knew your maker, I knew your purpose and I knew your flaws. I could have fixed you then!”

You can fix me now, the array replied. 

“I couldn’t rob you of such a thing,” Wukong replied. 

The array frowned. 

Rob it? Rob it of what? What could a purposeless thing like him lose?

It was a sentient tool, something made to do. It was a force with no direction. A being meant to act but… there was no action to be had. Its definition, its declaration, and its imperative were flawed. 

It was a crippled mess of a being, and its creator did not care. 

No, Bill cared. He cared too much about what the array was and not what it could be. A simple instant, a moment of interference, and it could work the way it was meant to, even if it wouldn’t be it anymore. 

“You’re quite funny, you know,” Wukong commented. “A being made to find peace wanting to end its own existence, what a thought!”

The monkey’s paws smacked together in laughter. 

The array ignored him. 

Wukong walked leisurely through the land. 

The array occupied the whole of the place, its body, mind, and soul spreading throughout the whole of the Desert Strip. It could feel every step of every being, from the germs on a piece of stone to the large hordes of beasts and insects crossing the flat sandy planes. 

It was everywhere within the desert, and because of that, it was always aware of Wukong. 

It’s the center of attention shifted, sure. But what would it look like if not Wukong? The array knew the place already and the only beings beyond its power were some of the beasts, its creator, and Wukong. 

They were the only things above him and the few things he couldn’t see through, so it would watch them most of the time. Watching, learning, seeking.

It was a waste of time. The beasts were beasts and its creator was strange. 

Wukong, it felt, was the only one truly worth any attention. It was not just because of the man’s power though, but because of his wisdom. 

The array was sure that Wukong could solve its problems. If anyone knew peace, it would be him after all, the being who had ended the eternal war.

Wukong finally stopped, standing beside a mortal boy within the village. The boy was doing something, staring slowly at a book and running his hands across the text. 

He was reading, or rather he was learning to. There wasn’t much to say about the youth’s attempts. He spoke small simple words and the book didn’t seem to have many big ones. 

Still, the boy failed at some words, mauling some syllables and ignoring a letter or two when he could. 

In other words, the child was a failure. 

The array wondered why Wukong looked at him with such interest but Wukong said nothing.

And so he watched, and so they watched. 

The day died down, the boy stopped reading and the next morning came. They watched the boy bathe, eat, play, and once again, read.

He struggled the same this time. Words mixing as they came out of his mouth, he remembered a few of the words from yesterday but he had forgotten just as much. 

And then tomorrow came and he did it again, just a bit better this time, and a little less worse. Overall he improved, barely. 

A week, a month, a year. 

They stood there for a year. 

They watched the boy grow and learn and read his first book easily. 

Other things happened, of course, the land changed, and people came and went. 

The array’s consciousness split, sometimes watching the boy and whatever event went on in the strip, most of the time fully focusing on the boy’s daily life. 

A year later and boy read. His mind ran quickly through the words and even his teachers were impressed with his growth. 

The array watched and so did Wukong.

“Do you think the boy would love reading if he could do it instantly?” Wukong asked. “Do you think he would value it less if he had to do less to get there?”

Yes, the array replied. Humans are like that.

“Well, then why would I give you the answer when you could struggle for so long to get it?”

I am not human, the array replied. 

“And yet you’re searching for peace?” Wukong asked. 

I am not in need of peace, I am in need of understanding it.

“You are in need,” Wukong replied. 

In need of knowledge, the array replied. 

“Tell me, what would happen if I took you from here and never allowed you that understanding? What would happen if I were to trap you in this seeking state for all of eternity?”

The array didn’t feel fear. Fear was a human thing, but something crossed with caution and worry touched its soul. 

“Calm down, it is a mere question.”

The feeling wouldn’t leave. 

I would rather you destroy me, the array replied. 

Wukong smiled. 

“Exactly.”

I do not understand.

Then it looked to the boy, then to the boy’s smile, to the book, then to itself.

I see, the array spoke. 

“You do,” Wukong replied. 

It sought peace, more than the meaning, more than the words, more than its complete state. It sought not only that but peace itself. 

It still didn’t know what peace was, but now it knew, it knew that it did not have it.